


Theoxenia

by faridsgwi



Series: Auspex [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: 19th century Jon, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Canon-Typical The Beholding Content (The Magnus Archives), Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Peter Lukas Being a Bastard, The Magnus Institute (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:06:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26951110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faridsgwi/pseuds/faridsgwi
Summary: London, 1848.An apprentice archive feeds his patron, breaks a rule, and reaches out to pull a young sailor out of the Lonely.
Relationships: Jonah Magnus & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: Auspex [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974427
Comments: 40
Kudos: 174





	1. A Dream Sequence.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Luunyscarlet for talking to me about this AU, and all the ideas that made it in here!
> 
> CWs in the end notes.

Jon was seventeen years old and he was lying paralysed in his bed, eyes wide open, not daring to close them. When he blinked, he swore the whole room blinked with him. Jon was seventeen, he was, _he was_...

*

~~He was only eight, and there was a pamphlet poking out from underneath an empty bed in the workhouse dormitories.~~

*

Jon was almost eleven, tiny and terrified, and it was _dark_.

He didn't know what had happened. One moment he had been ascending the stairs for the night, and the next he was... _here_ , wherever here was. A few of the lamps on the wall had been out, his shadow stretching ominously toward the black gap they had left, and he had hesitated staring into it and its unknown monsters. It seemed impassable, almost solid. But he had to pass it. His bedroom was on the other side, and there surely he would be safe.

The moment he stepped out of the light he was lost. There were no longer any stairs leading up or down; there was no way out; there was no light, not anywhere, maybe not in the entire world.

It wasn't long before he found that he was weeping, unable to push down the rising fear.

He had been locked up in the dark before. It was illegal, technically, but it was a punishment the workhouse had used on disobedient boys all the time. Jon must have angered Mister Magnus somehow. He had only been apprenticed a few months, he might still be returned; all the care he had here might be taken away if he misstepped, and he didn't know what it would take for that to happen, because he had tried _so_ hard not to give Mister Magnus any reason to discipline him at all. He had been studious and good and strict with himself, as strict as his master was.

"No," he sobbed into the darkness, below his breath. "No, no."

In the confinement cell at the workhouse he had used to press himself into the corner and cover his face with his hands, or console himself with tracing words and stories onto the cold floor. But here, he couldn't seem to look away from the darkness. There were no corners to back into.

"P-Please let me out," he tried crying out, hating the pathetic way that his voice broke, hating that the vast cavernous echo of this place magnified it a hundred times. "Please, sir, I'm sorry, I'll do anything, I didn't mean t-to -"

But he heard no reply, and he knew that there would be none.

He must have embarassed Mister Magnus in front of his friend. That was the only explanation. In the time he'd been living in Magnus's house he had met only perhaps six other people, all other employees of his master, but today there had been a guest, a _Mister Rayner_ he was summoned to stand before: an African gentleman, very severely dressed, with eyes clouded completely milky white.

"You've finally decided to establish a legacy in my fashion, then, Jonah," the man had said, the pleasure in his voice very wry.

Not sure where to look, Jon had kept his eyes on his own folded hands. Mister Rayner had a manservant waiting outside, a teenage boy who had neither said a word nor even looked at Jon. His shadow had been very black indeed.

Mister Magnus's hand tightened proprietarily on Jon's bony shoulder.

"Something like that," he agreed coolly. "What do you think of him?"

Jon had thought their guest was blind, but either he could see Jon or Magnus must have described him before he came into the room. Luckily he had made sure to stand very proper anyway.

"I think he's rather small to contain your ambition," huffed Rayner, harshly amused. "But he'll grow, I'm sure."

Mister Magnus had dismissed Jon then, but he kept his ears open like he had been taught, and as he turned to go he heard his employer say _do try not to entirely devour him, Maxwell._

 _Ah, Jonah,_ Rayner had retorted. _We both know that my patron does as it will._

If either of the men could hear him from wherever they had sent him, they didn't respond. No one answered his cry.

Jon hugged his knees to him and swiped roughly at the tears in his eyes with the heel of his hand. No one was going to come for him. He told himself that he had to endure being alone in the dark and then he had to beg Mister Magnus's forgiveness.

Except that he was wrong to think he was _alone_.

It was just a noise at first, a whispered rustle like what Jon imagined the sound of a snake slithering over stone to be. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood up, and he looked around frantically for its source, with no use. The darkness was all-consuming.

 _You're being ridiculous_ , he tried to scold himself, _you're letting your mind play tricks is all. There's nothing, no one here._

But then a touch, feather-light against his knee, and doubt was lost to panic. He stumbled back, trying desperately not to whimper - _if you make a noise it'll get you_ , promised the more childish and less sceptical part of his mind - and to sense where it might be. Was it chasing him? He couldn't hear it anymore. Did that mean it was gone? Jon didn't understand, didn't know what he had done to earn this. Had his master fed him to the creature on purpose?

Another touch, this time on his shoulder. Underneath the menacing softness Jon felt something _sharp_. He jerked away and fell hard against what felt like chilled stone, never touched by the warmth of the sun, with no time to suppress the noise of pain he made, nor his hysterical breaths as he attempted again to scramble up and flee.

It had been behind him that time. Either it was far faster than he, or he was surrounded, and there was nowhere to go at all: he was trapped, his thudding pulse so loud he was sure the beast would be able to track him by it. He spun uselessly around searching for his pursuer.

Nothing moved for a mere heartbeat. And then everything did, the black space around him convulsing and congregating into a thousand feelers that seized him with wicked claws and hauled him into the air.

Jon shrieked helplessly in terror, surrounded on all sides by darkness and an invisible nightmare, with not even the ground to anchor him.

He screamed, and lost himself to the dark.

And then -

*

~~He was eight and he was staring, rapt, at the words _who is it, Mister Spider?_~~

*

Jon was twelve and the air smelled rotten.

Mister Magnus had given him free reign to roam London as he wished; in fact he had _insisted_ that Jon take the opportunity to explore, not so much a suggestion as an order. So, here he was, with instructions to come back with a report of what he had seen.

He was watching just like Mister Magnus had taught him, 'following the Watcher's Gaze', which had led him miles away from the Institute through the London sprawl, to a factory. It was near the iron works, but too small and odd-looking to be one of them. No plaque or sign outside stated what it produced: some kind of chemical, clearly.

People passing pressed their handkerchiefs to their faces and hurried by, turning away from the stench that emerged from it. The stink was oily and rancid in Jon's throat and nose, billowing visibly from the chimneystacks in a thick greenish white column, as though they had managed to condense all of London particular smog into one single gas.

This could not be natural. Jon could sense that it wasn't: something buzzed in his ears, pulled his eyes urgently toward the factory.

It wasn't so hard to sneak inside, not least because no one was watching the window he slipped in through. The workers were too sick to care. Their eyes were glassy, skin alternately pale and flush, wheezing and spluttering, hair flattened with sweat. He remembered, when his grandmother had been working, if they admitted being ill they'd lose a day's wages, so they didn't dare. Not wanting to lose a set of hands, the foreman never checked all that carefully that they were well either - but the foreman here didn't look too healthy himself. Jon didn't even need to do more to hide than duck behind a bench, staring worriedly at the way the man turned on his unsteady rounds to hack into his sleeve, leading a vivid red splatter behind.

Why didn't they stop? Why didn't any of them even pause? Dozens of workers, maybe even hundreds, old and young, stirred and pumped and wound the machines, and what Jon had at first taken to be steam revealed itself to be the same exhaust gas the factory was expelling, filling the air around them from the ceiling down. But still they kept at it, seemingly oblivious to their own coughing and retching, helpless to stop despite the expression of dull terror on their own faces.

Jon covered his mouth and nose with his jacket and took a step out to search for he didn't know what - the boss, maybe - only to put his foot in something cold and wet, a thin brown sludge that soaked through his socks. Not run-off from the machines, he realised, but something bubbling from out of the pipes that ran below the building, the sewers. He gagged but couldn't stop looking: the workers marching on, hazy through the pollution, the dirty water rising, the reek in the air.

By the time he was able to tear his eyes away it was too late. He tried to run, but the window he had climbed through had been locked tight, all the doors barred and sealed. So Jon did the only thing he could think to do, and followed his instincts to bolt further into the smog, searching for anything at all that wasn't _rotten_. The more he ran the more he wheezed, and the less clear his thoughts became, his panting only pushing it faster into his system. He could not have said how he knew where to find the vent he did, nor how he knew to kick at its lock until it broke and crawl inside. He just knew.

Jon's shoulders were forced to hunch in tight, his body so constrained that he could barely manage to squirm along - _must be why they didn't block it off too well_ , he thought, since anyone larger than the still too-small Jon would never be able to fit through. There were other creatures than humans in the tunnel though, fleeing from the gas too: insects writhing past and what felt like a rat scurrying over his arm. He pressed his mouth shut with a suppressed cry, frightened that they would try burrowing into him in their desperation to get away. Even his body was probably poison. His chest felt like there was a great weight laid on it, his stomach roiling, throat burning, vision swimming.

 _I don't want to choke to death_ , he thought, and almost broke down at the idea. But he couldn't stop moving.

Somehow, as though the knowledge had simply appeared in his head, Jon was certain that on the other side of the vent was clean air. All he had to do was push through.

He couldn't tell how long he had been wriggling by the time his fingers met another metal grill, straining to hook onto it and pull the rest of his body close. When he struggled to crane his neck to see past it, he could see the anaemic city sunlight filtering down. He pressed himself to it, gasping as hard as he could manage, but no matter how Jon scrabbled and tugged frantically at it, the outside grate would not budge, rusted shut too stiffly for his failing strength to fight.

His mind filled with dawning horror: he would vomit and choke and die here and rot and the insects would eat him and...

Jon gulped air convulsively, once, twice, black spots spreading in his vision as his lungs filled entirely with smog, and he was overwhelmed by the filth and went limp.

*

_No more, please, enough. Please wake up. Make it stop._

_Jon, wake up._

_Wake up!_

*

~~He was eight and his limbs were trembling as he clambered jerkily out of his bed, puppeted by invisible strings.~~

*

Jon was fourteen and the city was too big to comprehend.

Mister Magnus had sent him to visit _Giovanni,_ another friend - this one an elderly man, Italian perhaps, though Jon heard no accent in his gleeful voice - who had led him up a secret route to the top of Saint Paul's and had him look out across London. Jon could feel the wind whipping around him, the pull of gravity dragging down at him stronger than he ever had before, and he didn't know whether it was the new height or something Giovanni had done that made him feel the urge to simply let go and fall.

The old man's hand settled between his shoulder blades, and Jon flinched, terrified that he was going to be pushed. Instead, he felt the bricks below him simply disappear, the sky suddenly surrounding him in a single, unbearable stretch of vibrant blue.

Looking up made his breath catch in his throat, made him feel like he had lost all control and sense of self, like he was nothing but a speck in an endless vastness.

Looking down filled him with a horror he couldn't name: it was London, but not as he knew it, London growing endlessly larger and more bloated, London consuming itself and everything within it, expanding to cover the horizon and the Thames, great towering buildings lancing up to meet the sky, surely too great to be lived in by any of the infinitesmial moving shapes he knew to be people.

He was lost within it, and then he was - he was...

Falling, stepping anxiously onto the ledge, coming back to ground, ascending the tower, all in the wrong order, staring into a pair of painted eyes.

_The visions began to meld and melt together as he grew nearer to the waking world._

*

~~He was eight and he was raising a trembling fist to knock on a door that should not have been there.~~

*

Jon was fifteen, staring at an automaton, tears in his eyes, stiff with dread.

The metal thing played a flute, the same few bars over and over, seeming nothing more than a trick of clockwork and hydraulics. The audience on the street clapped, amused, even as many were unsettled. But Jon knew better.

He had seen the strangers, faces hidden under broad hats, seize a woman out of an alley and bundle her toward the machine. He knew what was fuelling it: not steam nor weights but her body, her fear, her struggling inside it. She had lost her time alive to producing parts of machines she didn't understand for purposes she didn't know, and now she was dying inside one. At least, Jon hoped she was dying. It was better than the alternative.

The automaton's metal face had her same badly-set broken nose, the same tears running out of her painted green eyes.

The organ-grinder that stood beside it grinned leadenly at Jon, and he understood with a sick jolt that beneath the strangers' faces as something blank and unknowable and cruel.

And then -

*

_Wake up!_

*

~~Jon was eight and Mister Spider's terrible arms were reaching for him.~~

*

Jon was seventeen, and he was dreaming.

He burst awake, coming violently up to consciousness with a choked-off yell as he always did on mornings like these, hands scrambling to throw off the sheets.

For a long few seconds Jon allowed himself to lie still, forcing some of the tension out of his rigid frame, holding his breath to slow his thundering heart. It hadn't been so bad, that night, really. Often he dreamt instead of the unfortunate souls from which he had taken statements, and their monsters - the woman caught hunting and eating rats, the man with skin made of molten wax, the too-long, distorted creature glimpsed over and over in reflections. His own miseries were at least contained to him.

There was, for a brief, intense moment, the pinned-in-place sensation of being Watched. It passed quickly, and it was nothing Jon wasn't used to.

Recently he had been feeling a rebellious urge to turn the portrait it usually emanated from toward the wall.

But today he just ignored it, pushed himself up from his bed and began the motions of the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry Jon  
> I debated doing the formatting like this so much but I liked it! Please let me know if it's Too Much.
> 
> I also have a doodle of Victorian Jon! A little older than he is here.  
> 


	2. Forsake / Renounce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mah-tin :)

In his nightmares Jon could never seem to remember that he had survived the fears visited upon him. He relived the instant of greatest terror, then woke. The moment that Mister Magnus rescued him was always conspicuously absent - because Mister Magnus almost always _had_ rescued him, tracked him down and pulled him out.

The first was the most vivid in his head, burnt seemingly permanently in his psyche. At some point (he had no idea how long since he had fallen into darkness), ten-year-old Jon had begun to be dimly aware of the dull red glow of gas lamplight through his eyelids, the carpeting of the stairs beneath him. He had been too scared to look up or uncurl from the tight, protective huddle he had folded himself into. But then there were strong hands lifting him, a familiar voice hushing him when he whined, he remembered very clearly, a chest to bury his tear-stained face in as he was carried back to his room.

"You're learning," Mister Magnus had purred, and his words were not kind, but his arms around Jon were.

Jon had understood then, for the first time, what he owed. Clothes, food, education, the life that Mister Magnus had given him by saving him from the monster. Everything. He'd never be able to repay the debt: the more time passed, the more nightmares he had to be dragged out of, the more he had to owe.

Magnus had said as much himself, albeit not directly. When Jon was suffocating in that factory he had wandered blindly into - stupid child, inexcusable - it was Magnus that had wrenched the vent open and tugged Jon over to the river (foul, of course, but not half so foul as the water inside the factory) to throw up and gasp obsessively at fresh air until the Crawling Rot was purged away. It was Magnus that had sighed tightly at the sight of Jon's small form wracked with shudders, shrugged off his frock-coat to wrap him in, and steered him into the waiting carriage - and, despite gazing at the filthy boy like something he'd found on the underside of his shoe, managed to look strangely pleased.

Jon had still been so frightened of disappointing, back then. He would have accepted any punishment to be told he hadn't proved himself unworthy - a beating, being subjected to that creature in the dark again, anything - and he wished to say that clearly, to inform his master that he'd learned his lesson. So, blearily, half-lost in a coat twice his size, he had looked up and weakly promised,

"I won't wander again, sir."

Mister Magnus had leaned back, one distinctly unimpressed eyebrow raised.

"And why on earth not? I gave you permission, didn't I?"

Jon had shrunk back at his sharp tone, clutching tighter at the folds of fabric around him, but he decided that he might as well ask; he'd been bold enough already (and he'd ruined the fine shoes and clothes that Mister Magnus had had made for him, too).

"Do you want rid of me now, sir?"

"Speak up, boy."

"Will you be sending me away?" Jon had asked, miserable.

Magnus had scoffed.

"Send you away? I think not. I have invested far too much in you to abandon the project now, and I don't need the extra effort of having to find a suitable replacement. Economically, it's worth keeping you alive merely to justify the money you've had me spend on candles."

Jon had been unable to do anything more than blink at him in shock - he hadn't known that Magnus had noticed his sneaking extra candles up from downstairs so that he could read at night, and to ward off the Dark - and wonder distantly if he was joking. He knew, once he was older, that his master assuredly was not: Jonah Magnus didn't make jokes, and though there had been a twist of humour to his words, his message had been serious.

The care and guidance he was given were an investment, and one Jon was expected to repay. There was a task he was being raised up to complete. At seventeen he was almost grown, but apparently not ready for whatever was planned for him. He didn't quite know its shape yet - he didn't think even Mister Magnus did - but he had a sense of its purpose, and he knew he had a duty to fulfil, no matter how he felt toward it.

Those were the thoughts that were in his head as he finished dressing, carefully smoothing out his collar. He had taken maybe a minute or two longer than usual to rise this morning, and there again was the press of the Eye, likely curious as to why. Jon simply continued about his ministrations and stared absently back. That had been among the first precepts he learned from Mister Magnus: one of _our lessons_ , as Magnus had always called them, quite distinct from the ordinary lessons taught to Jon by his day tutors.

_Do you understand now, the importance of the eye? How dangerous it is not to be able to see?_

That terror of the dark had no more left him than the fear of spiders. So he was careful always to watch and understand.

Jon was too late to eat breakfast, but that was fine; he deigned to ignore the barely-acceptable state of his hair and hurry over to Mister Magnus's office instead.

He wished he could say that the slight smile playing around his master's lips when Jon closed the door behind him didn't fill him with concern. Magnus's office was broad and well-lit, the dark wood of the towering bookshelves illuminated with natural light during the day by the tall windows looking out over London. An elaborate Persian rug covered the space between the door and the desk, and there were a pair of stern leather chairs empty beside the fireplace where Magnus met with his associates.

Jon worked in the Institute's archives, and that was where he read most of the statements. But he had read his first here.

"Good morning," he began, doing his best to obscure the caution in his voice.

Mister Magnus waved for him to come closer. As he approached, he could see a letter in the man's hand, its paper old and damaged with damp in places, its writing cramped and blotted as though written in a hurry.

"A new statement, sir?"

This, he was familiar with. At first, Magnus had made something of a game about the statements. _While I do love to read, unfortunately I fear I'll get a headache if I do so any longer._ That was why he had need of a boy to read to him, he had said. He had left other statements within the books in Jon's bedroom, unsupervised on desks beside which Jon was asked to wait, in among the folders he was organising, and Jon, ravenously curious, had rapidly consumed them. It had taken a few years for them to abandon the pretence entirely, for taking and organising statements and artefacts to become simply part of the work he did for his employer, alongside running errands and researching for the Institute. Magnus even occasionally referred to him as an archivist or apprentice archivist - but Jon knew the way his master used words. He was not still so blind as to what his real tasks were.

There was a new wooden chest on the desk, as well, which concerned him; _artefacts_ always seemed to be more volatile.

"Just a letter from an old friend." said Magnus, his smile still plainly sinister. "I admit I did consider having you make a statement of it, but it seemed such a shame to waste the opportunity to have you investigate directly, since I'm currently on such good terms with the Lukas family. You have met Mordechai Lukas, yes? Or his brother, Peter?"

Jon swallowed hard, not quite able to prevent his shoulders from creeping up around his ears, despite knowing how Mister Magnus disapproved of such failures in his posture.

"Yes," he said, throat suddenly dry. "...Not together, though."

"Well, no, quite."

Jon Knew what they had done. He Knew, and he knew what it had felt like, and he could tell nobody. Even if he knew anybody outside of Magnus's influence, which he really didn't, it had been made clear to him very early on that he was never to interfere in the actions of another Power. _An Eye is an observer, not a meddler_ , Mister Magnus had told him sternly, and the last thing he needed was Jon drawing the ire of influential potential enemies; Jon was to be respectful and courteous.

He Knew that the Lukases had killed young Evan Lukas, had felt the boy's fear as they abandoned him to starve alone. It had come to him the last time Mordechai had visited the Institute to talk with Magnus, when Jon had accidentally looked straight at him, as though the knowledge was sent to him deliberately as a warning. But he still had to be respectful of them.

"I'll have someone sent over to fetch you this evening."

"Yes, sir."

"In the meantime, I want you to look further into this Asag being - there's a volume on demonology that I-"

Though Jon listened carefully, his mind was already gone, fixated on what was about to happen.

*

Jon hoped Mister Magnus's _old friend_ was living safely far away, or resting peacefully, but he doubted it. In fact, it could not be a coincidence that the box that been on Magnus's desk was of just the right dimensions to hold a man's skeleton. He was fairly sure by now he would not be of any use to his employer dead - but that was drowned out by the disconcerting knowledge that he now knew of two people likely disposed of by the Lukases.

Jon had never met Evan. He had never even heard of him, though he supposed logically any family so numerous and wealthy must have their heirs. They must have kept him - and any others - hidden away, isolated, and killed him the moment they realised he was going to reject them, run away to try and find connection anywhere. _A shame_ , the voice that Evan's memories in Jon's head recognised as _Uncle Peter_ had said, echoing and distorting strangely.

Both of the Lukas brothers were tall, but while Mordechai was apparently content to loom and look over the top of people's heads, Peter's stare always seemed to go straight through them.

Peter gave no outward sign of noticing Jon as he walked into Mister Magnus's office, nodding absently at his friend and, without looking, raising one hand to brush his fingers almost-thoughtlessly against Jon's shoulder. Jon, who had stood to attention braced for him, was confused for a moment at the gentleness.

And then he was gone.

All at once Jon was somewhere else, a land full of fog and swirling mist, lit by an indistinct moon and surrounded by soft, crashing waves.

He was more alone than he had ever been in his life.

*

The grey land was both empty and not. It was not unpopulated - Jon could sense the faint lamps of other people's minds, slipping like smoke through his fingers, faraway and absorbed totally in their own thoughts - but he felt sure that he could walk for days, weeks, even, and never come across another soul.

Was that really so different from his everyday life?

Jon lived in the busiest city in the world, yes, and he was used to the press of humanity around him; after the workhouse it had taken him a long while to adjust to sleeping in a room not filled wall to wall with other boys. But he had no one he would call his friend. He ate formally opposite Mister Magnus, or casually perched in the kitchen while the servants worked around him, not really a part of either group. There was no one his age that he spoke to. The girl in the post office smiled at him, sometimes, and Jon had even managed to smile back once or twice, but that was nothing, not really.

He was very often alone. Perhaps that was because that was how it should be.

For the most part the fear here was soft, a low background hum of unease. There were a few cries for help, unheeded, ringing somewhere from voices long gone; even then, the terror rose out of the lack of something rather than its presence. It was easier, more comfortable, to accept being here. After all, trying to leave might mean being rejected, and surely it was better to be only alone than outright unwanted.

He could feel the faint, remnant pain of a man named Barnabus Bennett, writing his name out in an attempt to remember it - _Mister Magnus's associate_ , supplied the voice in his mind that told him such things - and see the distant shape of what he knew to be Evan's body, slumped hopelessly half-down on the sooty sand. He didn't move any closer to it. When it had been long enough that only Evan's bones remained, maybe someone would come and retrieve them, too. Jon hoped so.

But perhaps they would both be forgotten. Only Mister Magnus would really notice Jon was gone, and nobody would ever come looking.

He was so very alone. There were the bodies, and the memories, but no one alive. _Th_ _ere's no other living soul in the world_ , whispered the landscape. _Just you, abandoned, forsaken._

Jon felt a twinge of doubt, but ignored it, beginning to walk aimlessly.

 _That's not true_ , insisted an ever-quieter part of Jon. _You felt the others here before they were swallowed by the mist._

No. It didn't matter: he belonged here, in his own company, where he wouldn't bother people. There couldn't be anyone else.

It felt like hours before he was able to have another thought. He wandered idly, apparently somewhere near the sea, though he never actually encountered it, and the slow, syrupy apprehension of solitude grew in the pit of his belly as he did.

 _Just look_ , pleaded the Beholder's voice. _There might be someone you can reach. You won't know unless you look._

And what if he did look, and there really was nobody and no way out? On all sides was the thick, seething fog, without end or beginning. His eye couldn't penetrate more than a few feet.

He realised _he couldn't see_ , a phobia far deeper rooted and better known to him than mere loneliness.

 _Do you understand now,_ Mister Magnus had said, after Rayner and the Dark. _How dangerous it is not to be able to see?_

He had, then, and he had sworn to himself that he wouldn't forget.

In the Lonely, Jon braced himself, opened his eyes wide, and Looked around.

It was full of other people. The mists kept them apart, guided them away or simply obscured reality so much that they passed within inches of each other without ever realising, but they were here, all as desolate and assured of their own isolation as he had been.

Relief overtook Jon, then horror. There were _people_ here, wasting away in their own despair, never knowing that the cure for their distress was within each. He thought about calling out, but he knew they would never hear him. Instead, he began to run toward the closest of them, his footsteps crunching dully against damp sand. At least, he thought they were the closest; certainly they were the one that called him most strongly.

There. He was sure that there was someone by the shore that he had forced his way toward. He couldn't see them, not truly, but he was sure that they were there. If he looked slightly to either side he could just about make them out, formless, faceless, but solid and real. _I'm going to help you_ , he decided. _Even if you're too scared to know you need help._

He had never managed it before. He had wanted to: the witch from whom Magnus occasionally acquired books had a son, a serious creature all in black, with a pale, angular face, not so much older than Jon. _Gerard_ , as he had heard her snap at him, had given Jon a few understanding glances as Magnus spoke, and Jon had wanted keenly to be able to speak to someone else who had been dragged up into this world as he had.

And then he had watched on as a creature made up of endless fractals loomed over the other boy, unable to warn him for fear of Magnus and the witch, who had both observed eagerly.

He hadn't saved Gerard or Evan, but this person, perhaps, he could.

Jon grit his teeth and focused as hard as he could, trying through sheer power of will to overcome the terror and the haze. He thought of the all-absorbing feeling of reading statements, the cold witnessing in his dreams, the pressure that Magnus's gaze put on him, all that information unspooling from around a person's mind and winding about his own. _I See you_ , he declared, brimming briefly with power, _I Know you._

What he saw was a kind person, soft despite everything, a sailor, fond of spiders, worried for his mother, well-used to restraining a secretly sharp tongue. Piece by piece the blurry shape began to take on features: he was roughly of an age with Jon, with a mop of pale-brown curls and freckles that looked wrong in light so pallid and washed-out. He sat with his lips slightly parted and his arms crossed loosely in his lap and didn't move, barely even breathing, as his unfocused eyes stared endlessly out into the constant, tideless waves. Unnaturally, he was at ease like this. Someone had made him feel he should be at ease like this.

"Do you know I'm here?" Jon asked, hearing it muffled. There was no reply.

After a long moment of more staring, the young sailor blinked lazily and lifted his head, his vision obscured by the fog.

"Hello?" he asked, voice mild and curious.

His eyes passed over Jon several times before they managed to land, and there a furrow appeared between his brows at the sight of an apparently stationary piece of mist congealing beside him. Still, his voice was low and gentle, talking to himself and expecting no reply.

"Oh? What are you?"

Jon was a little hurt, however irrationally; he was a _who_ , not a _what_. But that was the thing about the Lonely, wasn't it? It wasn't enough for him to be able to see someone; they had to see him too. So Jon concentrated with all his might, shouting _here I am, look at me_ to the universe, and said,

"My name is Jon."

The sailor's face turned even whiter, his mouth dropping open and eyes frantically scanning up and down the figure who had appeared from nowhere.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," Jon prompted, since he had clearly forgotten his manners.

The other boy startled and found words.

"I'm, ah, M-Martin...?"

"Martin. Alright." Jon nodded to himself, ignoring the continuing look of stunned disbelief. "Alright. We're going to get out of here."

"W-What -" Martin began to shake, drawing away from Jon. " _Why?_ I'm..."

"Lukas was manipulating you," Jon intoned, pulling the truth out of the air. "He was lying, making sure you felt so alone that you thought you deserved this place. You were groomed for silence and emptiness and _this_ because he feeds on it. It's not your fault. It wasn't true."

Oh no. Martin looked as though he was about to cry. Jon bit awkwardly on his lip, too hard, snapping himself away from the Ceaseless Watcher with a wince.

"Sorry. H-He sent me here too, but it's... I think I know how to break loose."

"How?"

The question was neutral, without any kind of hope, and Jon found that he didn't actually know the answer in words.

He reached out instinctively to take Martin's hand.

It was very cold, for a moment, like he had taken hold of a block of ice and sent the shock of it up his body - and then it wasn't, and the hand was human and warm in his, and the fog around them cleared.

They were alone, but they were together, and for some reason they seemed to be in Jon's bedroom.

*

It was a little embarassing, actually, a little more intimate that he was accustomed to, having someone in his room. He supposed this must be the place he felt the least lonely.

Martin, still clutching tight to Jon, collapsed as soon as they appeared, totally disorientated by the shift from the bleak white of Forsaken to Jon's dark, narrow room. He was taller and broader than Jon, and he pulled Jon down with him - but even if he hadn't, Jon would have gone anyway.

"Martin? Are you hurt?"

There was an incoherent noise in response. His other hand flitted uncertainly to Martin's arm, resting lightly on top of the sodden fabric of his pale uniform. It did little to calm either of them: Jon had never been good at interaction of any kind.

"We were," Martin croaked, eyes still fixed desperately on Jon as hundreds of half-formed questions tumbled through his mind. "You - I was -"

"We're back." confirmed Jon, seizing on the most important of the questions. "There are other people. Uh, wait a moment,"

He broke off their contact - relieved, secretly, to have confirmation that the other boy wouldn't immediately disappear the moment he did, though alarmed at Martin's little inhale - and crossed quickly over to the window, yanking the curtain out of the way and shoving it open. Sure enough, the ordinary noise of a bustling London street began to filter in from below.

But Martin had been shivering already, drenched to the skin by sea-spray and mist, and he began to shake in earnest at the slight breeze, lips a little blue.

Jon made another split-second decision as he hurried back, dragging the great pile of sheets off his bed to drape on Martin, who took them half-numbly.

"I'll get more," he promised, turning to dig through his wardrobe for blankets; and then, on the grounds that it would probably help to keep him talking, "What happened?"

"It was the captain," breathed Martin, with an ease even through chattering teeth that spoke of compulsion - which, Jon realised guiltily, hadn't actually been his intent. He just wasn't used to asking questions of that kind without compelling. "Peter Lukas. You said... he put you there too?"

Jon made a grim face. "Jonah Magnus is a friend of his family," he said, knowing it wasn't sufficient.

Martin nodded back, though he didn't understand.

"I was the youngest anyway," he went on. He had a naturally soft voice, a hint of the West Country. "Most of the other sailors were full grown, out of the navy, but I found the captain and asked if he'd take me too. My mum was sick and we needed the money. I had to. Captain Lukas said yes, but he said I should stay away from the others, for my own sake, and I - I didn't know what he meant, but I'd lied to him, said I'd sailed before when I hadn't, and I was scared anyone who knew what they were doing would realise even if they were good to me. So I stayed away."

Jon tucked the last of the blankets he had found over Martin.

"He was targeting me, wasn't he?" Martin whispered.

"They do that," agreed Jon, more bitterly than he meant to, and at the swell of shame and loneliness he felt rise up again from Martin he put his thin arms inelegantly around him and squeezed. Martin was still much bigger than him, which was not a difficult feat, though he slumped his shoulders to seem smaller than he really was. As though he had been the victim of freezing, and not fear, the warmth and the pressure seemed to free up something in his chest.

Jon pulled back, but slipped his smaller hand into Martin's again when the other boy seemed to be reaching out. He had hard hands - whatever Peter Lukas had been doing to keep him secluded, it clearly hadn't prevented him from actually working on the ship - while Jon's were roughed only where the pen rested against them. They had been that way for a long time; when he was little, he had used to make sense of the world by writing it out in an inkless pen, putting his life into words that no one would see. He had deprived himself of sleep doing it, but it had comforted him.

As shock began to wear off, Martin looked with clearer eyes at the room, at the piles and piles of books springing like strange fungi from every surface. His eyes also travelled to Jon, who realised with a rush of embarassment that he was only in his shirtsleeves - so was Martin, of course, but Martin had an excuse.

"More blankets?" he offered, standly abruptly.

"I think you can stop," Martin countered, a tinge of warmth in his voice like he was charmed. Jon flushed; if he turned toward the window, he decided, Martin wouldn't be able to see his red face. From that direction he heard a familiar meow. Of course - usually when he opened the window it was a cue for...

Jon went over and leaned half out, making undignified gestures at the fat little animal sat out on the roof.

"Hey," he hissed, hoping his voice was too quiet for Martin to hear. "C'mere. _Pspspspsps_ , c'mere."

After a moment's token ignoring him, as cats do, it slinked over and allowed Jon to lift it inside and deposit it in Martin's lap; either recognising a person in great distress or a fantastic source of potential warmth, the cat curled up and began to purr immediately.

Martin's face lit up.

"Oh! Hello!" He sunk his warming fingers into thick orange fur, looking with delight at the little face. "What's your name?"

Jon settled crosslegged on the floor, within arm's reach of Martin.

"He doesn't have a name."

Though he kept stroking, Martin frowned.

"He's not a pet," Jon explained. "I'm not to keep pets, so he can't be, he's just... an inordinately friendly mouser."

The cat was giving Jon's unoccupied hands a baleful look; he caved, and scritched its head.

"Our relationship is purely professional," he murmured fondly. "Merely two servants of the same master."

A smile broke out across Martin's face, one that transformed it. _A nice smile_ , Jon thought. He hadn't thought that about anyone before, but it was true; Martin had a soft, round face still, and smiling fit better on it than the empty look he had been wearing when Jon first saw him.

The cat demanded several minutes of undivided attention before they could speak again.

"Jonah Magnus." Martin began, brows furrowed. "I think I've heard of him, somewhere? From the captain, maybe, or one of his business partners?"

That sounded right. Magnus moved in all kinds of circles, and moved a lot of money with him: he had been an architect, at one time, but now he said coyly that his wealth was mainly _in secrets_. Provided by blackmail, in plain terms.

"And you're... his student?"

Jon was too amazed to contain a snort at the fact that Martin apparently thought Jon was _of the same class as Mister Magnus_. It shouldn't be as surprising as it was: he had the clothes, the accent - he couldn't even remember what his voice had used to sound like before Magnus had taught him proper speech. But he had been shaped into that person, not born to it.

"Mister Magnus acquired me from a workhouse." he explained, low. Perhaps he should be ashamed of that, but he wasn't. "Couldn't leave even if I wanted to."

"You _don't_ want to?"

It was the wrong thing to say. Jon's excuses caught in his throat - why didn't he? After all Magnus had done to him, all he had made Jon do.

"He isn't a..." Jon couldn't say it, couldn't deny that his master was a bad person. "...He saved me, more than once, and I'm indebted to him for it. I'm grateful, truly. As I should be."

Jon could hear himself lying, and he knew Martin could too. He looked down at the dozing cat to avoid Martin's pitying eyes. There was a small creak, he thought from Martin, which he elected to ignore, not wishing to confront the subject any further.

And then, in a cold voice from the doorway,

" _Jonathan._ "

Martin froze, and the cat bristled, though thankfully the animal wasn't stupid enough to hiss. Jon rushed abruptly to his feet, unable to breathe, heart pounding.

Jonah Magnus stood there, expression blank but undeniably furious.

Jon had pulled someone away from one of the Powers, broken a rule, disobeyed an order. The first time he had ever done so. His master was going to make sure he answered for it.

Magnus looked harshly toward Martin, and Jon's panic forced him into motion.

"I thought that, that I would take a statement from him, sir," he stammered futiely, knowing that he was failing to conceal the terror on his face.

Slowly, predatorily, Magnus shook his head.

"A single statement." he said, crisp. "Not quite worth the price of the Lukases's wrath, don't you agree?"

The weight of the Watcher increased on Jon, a thousand tiny pinpricks, so intense that his skin crawled.

"And anyway," Magnus continued, the threat only growing in his voice. "Peter will be wanting his crew member back."

Martin choked down an involuntary noise of fear.

"Unless the boy had some other form of occupation, of course."

It was phrased like an olive branch, but from Magnus, that was a weapon. _Stay away_ , Jon wanted to scream; still, when Martin fixed on it, Jon couldn't move to stop him. From his pocket Mister Magnus produced a contract of employment (indenture, really) for the Magnus Institute.

This was intended as a way to punish him, Jon was sure. To trap someone here so he could be made to watch them suffer.

But given the choice between that or being returned to the Lonely, he could hardly blame Martin for carefully pushing the cat away and signing _M. K. Blackwood_ in a trembling hand. Jon hadn't felt so helpless in years.

Magnus's expression eased as he took back the contract and rolled it up - to be sealed, Jon knew, with an imprint of the stylised eye on his signet ring. He seemed to be contemplating, like a scientist looking down at some still-breathing thing he planned to dissect.

"He should be of use to you, Jonathan. There's plenty to do around the archive. Perhaps we should hire more assistants."

Their eyes met and Jon's blood ran cold.

He wasn't stupid. He had begun to realise a long time ago that Mister Magnus was making him into something, something evil, something other than human. Even despite the nightmares they gave him, the dreadful guilt for what he inflicted on their subjects, he craved the statements. Jon didn't know what would happen if he stopped taking them; Magnus had never allowed him to try.

And now Magnus wanted to do this to other people, too.

As Mister Magnus stepped past them to leave, he turned back toward where Jon was rooted to the floor with horror, too rigid to even look away, and spoke in a voice full of false lightness.

"I do hope this wasn’t a part of some new inclination to insubordination."

"Of course not, sir," Jon breathed, utterly sincere with dread. "Never."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please sir, spare some female character..... next time, I swear.
> 
> 'Theoxenia' is the ancient Greek concept of hospitality to gods.

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warnings:
> 
> \- Child abuse via The Fears  
> \- Emotional manipulation  
> \- Discussion of the murder of a family member considered disappointing  
> \- Canon-typical content for the Fears, including: the Dark, the Corruption (sickness rather than bugs if that makes a difference), the Vast, the Stranger, and the Lonely.


End file.
